


Resolve, and other lies

by DirectorShellhead



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Breathplay, Clothing Kink, Dissociation, Dom Bucky Barnes, Feminization, Humiliation, Impact Play, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Manipulation, No Aftercare, Orgasm Control, Sloppy Makeouts, Sub Steve Rogers, Subterfuge, Under-negotiated Kink, Whipping, absurd amounts of precome, worship of nipples and underthings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:21:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4264743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirectorShellhead/pseuds/DirectorShellhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Superhuman Registration Act is signed into law, and Steve Rogers loses his shit. Barnes steps in and does what's necessary to keep him from charging off in a righteous rage and getting himself killed. It's all purely tactical, of course.</p><p>Or, lots of porn with a side helping of plot just big enough to provide context.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resolve, and other lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sucrosesanction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sucrosesanction/gifts).



> Written as part of a D/s Buckysteve fic exchange. Request was for breathplay, clothing kink, impact play, orgasm control, sloppy makeouts, and worship. No specifics beyond the requested kinks were given, so I wrote the fic I'd have liked to read based on those kinks. Resulting porn is not cheerful and it is not clear-cut. Read at your own risk. 
> 
> Some of my tags got deleted or cut off somehow when I first posted this, and I am VERY SORRY about that -- tags in question being 'undernegotiated kink' and 'no aftercare'. Sincerest apologies for this oversight.

As if Hydra hadn’t been enough of a pain in his ass, now there’s Steve goddamn Rogers to manage.

“What are you _doing_ here?” Steve growls, flinging his shield as they run. The last agent still charging at them through the smoke crumples to the asphalt.

“Like hell I was gonna stay put in Romanova’s safehouse while your dumb ass came out here to take their bait,” Barnes says, glancing back at the smoking crater his grenade launcher had left in the side of the abandoned stadium.

“It wasn’t bait. It was a…it was supposed to be a conversation.” Such betrayal in his voice.

“So that EMP you slipped him, that was, what, your idea of an icebreaker? ‘Hey, Stark, good to see you, let’s chat about registration, don’t mind me while I _shut your fucking armor down_ ’.”

Not six months it’s been since he’d taken pity on Steve and his dogged tracking efforts, pretending to listen to his stilted attempts at reassurance and persuasion before teaming up with him and Wilson and Romanova. It had been to his advantage. They’re assets who share his primary objective: burn Hydra to the ground.

Not six fucking months availing himself of their resources, performing _Bucky,_ winning their allegiance and capitalizing on their misplaced sympathies without raising any red flags, but already he is exhausted, because Steve, who tries harder to get himself killed than anyone Barnes has ever known, says things like:

“There weren’t supposed to be agents! He said we’d meet alone, talk it out!”

Which causes Barnes to experience heartburn and the intense urge to shake Steve by the scruff of his neck. He’s been worse, reckless and brash and alarmingly angry, in the wake of Sokovia and then Stamford, ever since _registration_ first became a buzzword and public opinion started to polarize. Opposing the pro-SHRA contingent, with all of SHIELD at its back and Stark at the political forefront, had then become Steve’s primary--and Barnes’ secondary--objective.

“We’ve got incoming, y’all need to _move_ ,” Wilson is shouting at them from the van at the edge of the lot, interrupting whatever other dumb excuses Steve was about to make for himself. Barnes follows Wilson’s eyes: trouble is rolling in fast, three Humvees full of a lot more manpower and weaponry than Barnes cares to handle right now.

“We can’t let this happen, Stark has to listen, the SHRA can’t become law—“

“It’s fucking happening, Steve. Now is not the time to stand your ground, so get. In. The van. We’re outta here,” Barnes snaps, and shoves him inside as the tires start to squeal.

**** *** *** *** ***

Two vehicle tradeoffs later, Wilson drops them at the safehouse to the tune of Steve’s outraged silence, then turns the nondescript little Hyundai around and disappears back up the muddy pockmarked drive. Romanova hasn’t responded on comms for days, but she is due back at their agreed-upon extraction point. Whether she’ll show up, with or without Murdock and Cage and the others, remains to be seen.

Steve stares at the ruts in the drive, watching them fill up with groundwater. Barnes watches him and figures he must be trying his best to grind his teeth to powder, what with the way his jaw is flexing.

“You need to come inside,” Barnes says neutrally.

“I _need_ to defend the freedom of the people who’ve been fighting to keep this country safe,” Steve seethes, rounding on him with a broiling aggression that sets Barnes deeply on edge. “I _need_ to go out there and be their Captain. Stand with them. Not retreat into the woods and hide.”

“That’s real inspiring, but even you’re smart enough to know you’re no good to them dead, and dead’s exactly what you’re going to be if you stand around out here dressed like a fucking target. I can’t _believe_ you wore the uniform. You’re a sniper’s wet dream right now.”

“I’m leaving, I can’t just—“

“Nope, you’re not going anywhere,” Barnes says, staring him down and calculating carefully. If he doesn’t argue this exactly the right way, he’ll only be pouring more fuel on the fire. “You’re going to march your ass inside, and you’re going to wait for your team to reassemble here,” he continues, because Steve’s biggest fault is his loyalty. “You owe them that, don’t you? After all this risk, after going underground like they’ve done, you can’t go blow this wide open before they’re ready for it. You want to have a hissy fit, fine, but go have it inside and _stay there_ , because that’s the plan, and it’s a better plan than charging off all half-cocked with no clear mission and no backup."

“Mhm, no backup. Says the guy who had my back for 300 miles and took out a whole squad of capekillers to clear a path for me,” Steve says.

Outrageous, how quick that softness is to creep into Steve’s tone, how easy it is to appeal to his sentiment. It makes Barnes furious. “Capekillers? Really? Okay, you’re done,” he grumbles, herding Steve toward the cabin door by the elbow. “Court death some other day when I don’t have to be involved.”

*** *** *** *** ***

“Yeah? And what are you gonna do about it right now?” Barnes challenges.

He had gotten Steve cooled down and corralled at last inside the cabin, and had achieved nearly one whole hour of relative peace.

Then Steve had turned on the radio and proceeded to lose his fucking mind.

The Superhuman Registration Act, signed into immediate effect by executive order in the wake of another incident in New York. Enhanceds have twenty-four hours to report and register. Sentinel squads stand ready to hunt down and take into custody any known powered people who fail to meet that deadline.

Steve draws up short in his furious pacing and tries to plow past him for the door all over again. Barnes inserts himself directly into Steve’s path, bulk crashing against bulk.

There’s a fire lit right behind Steve’s eyes, and it flares at the impact. The way he plants his boots and squares up, he’s like a goddamn bull ready to charge. He pushes Barnes; there’ll be bruises later, under his clavicle. Fine. He’s serious. Barnes gets it, even if he’s not going to let him get away with it and risk having his own cover blown in the process. It’ll be a cold day in hell before he lets himself wind up on some list and becomes someone else’s asset. Not Hydra’s, not SHIELD’s, not anyone’s. Not ever again.

“Outta my way, Buck, I’m not in the mood,” Steve snarls.

Barnes doesn’t have the decency to budge; Steve might as well be shoving at a brick wall. “You and me both, pal,” Barnes snaps in perfect broad Brooklynese: quintessential Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes circa 1944. Barnes has watched endless old clips and news reels, practiced shaping his mouth precisely like so, pitching his tone in - yes, just that way that makes Steve’s lips part fractionally, as they’ve done just now, wanting, thirsting for something without Steve consciously realizing it, before he can recover himself.

“What is it you think you want, hm?” Barnes continues. “To start a war right this minute? Get your people caught up in a shitstorm--don’t give me that look, you know they’ll follow you--before you’ve had a chance to prepare them. You'll lose half the team, maybe more, to a bunch of sentinels. For what, Captain?”

Steve tries to shoulder past him again, so Bucky pushes back, harder than Steve had, the heels of his hands rammed against Steve’s hipbones as he surges forward to crowd Steve toward the wall. “Gonna go prove some point about never backing down, even when digging in your heels is stupid and sure to fail? Yeah, that’ll show’em.”

Steve’s exhale is forceful enough that the air of it feels sharp against Barnes’ cheek; every inch of muscle in him coils tight, ready to implode or give Barnes one hell of a fight. Steve’s about to start roaring some righteous argument, but before he goes off, Barnes plants his left hand over Steve’s mouth, grips hard, and walks Steve the rest of the way back into the wall. He hits it shoulders-first, with a dull thud.

“Sometimes you’ve got to lie down and accept defeat, or at least make a show of it,” Barnes growls, one thigh shoving between Steve’s legs and his right hand pressed flat and wide over his belly to pin him in place. “Sometimes that’s what it takes before you can regroup and win the goddamn war. You _know_ this, so take a breath and knock off the pacing. You’re gonna wear a rut through the floor.”

There is more to chastise; Barnes keeps a stash of barbs to use in circumstances such as these, needling gripes fit to defuse and redirect the riled bull like so many scraps of red fabric. Does he want to waste hours scrapping with law enforcement when he could be rallying the team in secret? Does he choose to be so shortsighted, or is it a fault of the serum? Does he realize how easily he might undermine everyone’s trust? Is he sure he’s ready to show his ass like this, all anger and impulse, no plan to speak of, no care for the long game?

Steve wrestles with his arm and kicks him in the shin; if Barnes weren’t still wearing his gear, thick boots and reinforced tac pants, he’d bet on a fracture. Despite this outburst, a deep frown carves its way over Steve’s brow. He’s still tense under Barnes’ hands, and his expression is hard to decipher, with half of Steve’s face hidden under unforgiving metal. But his eyes have gone softer, something like confusion undercutting brilliant blue. 

Good.

He squeezes fractionally harder, servos whirring faintly as the arm recalibrates, and Steve’s eyes flutter. He’s still wound up tight as a tripwire, but he leans into Barnes’ hand at his waist, as if Barnes weren’t pressing him back against the wall, he just might snap and crumple forward.

“So Stark didn’t listen. So the public’s gone nuts. So what? You can’t go take down the whole government right this minute, can you?” Barnes asks, quieter now, with his left hand shoved up tight under Steve’s nose. His grip is  severe; where the fingerless glove ends, metallic digits register the hardness of Steve’s teeth right through his cheeks. “You can wait another few hours ‘till we’re reassembled, and then you can do your liberty-and-justice schtick, get the team’s engines revved, and bring any new recruits Romanova pulls in up to speed.”

Steve tries again to tug Barnes’ arm down away from his face so he can get some real air, but he doesn’t put true effort into it. The rage that had springloaded his whole frame into a threat is already bleeding away

Isn’t that interesting.

Barnes’ grip doesn’t relent. He just nudges his thigh up against Steve’s crotch and grins. Steve is hard. The muscles low in his abdomen twitch under Barnes’ hand; Barnes can feel it even through the stiff thick fabric of Steve’s uniform.

“Oh, is that so,” Barnes says laconically, right against the side of Steve’s throat, then bites at the soft spot just under his jaw.

Steve writhes against him, grabbing his waist so quick that Barnes jumps a little. He covers it by flicking his tongue over the indents he’s just left in the side of Steve’s neck. “Think we can take a break from all the moral outrage long enough to address that situation, Captain?” he asks, his hand gentling over Steve’s face as his gaze flicks down to his crotch, then back up again.

Steve thrashes angrily, then settles and, finally, nods--or does his best to, given that his face is pinned to the wall. Barnes lets go at last to run his left hand down under Steve’s chin and along his throat. He pauses there, his palm cupped over Steve’s larynx. Barnes knows exactly how much pressure is required to collapse it, to cut off his air supply, to rip through the carotid pulsing beside it.

“You can’t pretend this isn’t happening.” Steve rasps, face tipped upward and scowling. Barnes finds it strangely satisfying, how he has to struggle to get the words out. His fingers ripple over Barnes’ ribs, tentative, anticipatory.

Barnes pushes Steve’s hands inexorably away from his own waist to trap against the wall. A humorless grin cool as ice slices across his face in a precise curve. “And you can’t pretend that you’re bulletproof, or that you and your whole team are gonna get a free pass to act like you’re above the law, not this time,” Barnes says.

Any response Steve might’ve had is nullified by Barnes driving their mouths together, a kiss-shaped demand: acquiesce.

Steve doesn’t really start kissing back until Barnes reopens the split in Steve’s lower lip. A copper tang tinges the slick slide of their tongues, then, and Steve forgets to be rigid. He keeps trying to get his hands back around Barnes’ hips, to grip at his elbows, to skim covetous fingertips up Barnes’ sides.

It’s not the contact so much as the urgency of it that makes Barnes’ skin flinch under his leathers.

Barnes pulls back all at once and simply stares Steve down, inscrutable, until Steve’s brows bunch up and his breath huffs out, a faint note of exasperation in it. He deliberately flattens his palms against the wall, looking up at Barnes now through his lashes. Coyness, but so calculating that it’s combative. That look on that face tugs at something gut-deep that Barnes is unequipped to parse.

Nothing for it but to hike his thigh up under Steve so hard that he’s lifted up onto the balls of his feet, to push his impossibly broad shoulders back against the wall with both hands as Barnes forces his tongue back through Steve’s reddened lips. Steve gasps right against his mouth when Barnes grips him by the hips and works him down against his leg. The way Steve groans with the added friction makes Barnes’ own throat feel scratched dry.

“That’s what you want, huh,” he goads before scraping his teeth over Steve’s tongue. He knows this is how it works, down deep past memories he can’t reclaim, despite having been told by none of the history books or magazine articles or psych files or mission reports on Captain Steven Grant Rogers.

His hands slip lower, fingertips driving hard into the curve of Steve’s ass through the rough material of the uniform--ridiculous, all the spangles and bright primary-colored nonsense, and even now Barnes cannot admit the sweet ache of seeing Steve clad in it--to drag him forward. “That’s right, gotta rub off right on my damn leg. Can’t even wait to strip down first. Shameless.”

Steve grinds himself against Barnes’ thigh with yet more vigor, whimpering low in his throat, so raspy it might as well be a weapon targeted at Barnes’ self-control.

Barnes slides two fingers into Steve’s mouth. It doesn’t part readily for him, not until he’s dug his thumb into the cut and mashed it around a little. Infuriatingly plush, those bloodied lips gone slack and skewed, Steve practically snarling at him with his mouth full. Barnes presses down at the back of Steve’s tongue; he coughs hard, and his gaze darkens with distress or pleasure. Both. “You’re gonna defile the stars and stripes, you keep rutting like that, Captain,” he murmurs.

Steve stares at him, hips stuttering forward while his face flushes pink, and bites down hard enough to draw blood. Barnes hisses through his teeth and shoves his fingers in deeper, until Steve gags and then suckles at them, slipping his velvet tongue over their length with his breath gone all hard and ragged.

Dizzying, this display. He’d let Steve use his tongue in other ways before, _before,_ a dozen times, a hundred, maybe more; he’s sure of it, despite having no concrete memory to back it up. It sends a wholly different calamity prickling under Barnes’ skin that isn’t fight or fury or even fear, one he’s got to work hard to keep at bay.

Steve rakes himself over Barnes’ holster strap and lets out a moan. It’s muffled by Barnes’ fingers but no less a knife between his ribs; it’s that intimate, that familiar. Barnes’ resolve collapses, and he meets the thrust of Steve’s pelvis with his own, unthinkingly.

The rush of sensation is enough to split his mouth open with a gasp.

Steve doesn’t miss the lapse; he catches Barnes’ eyes and rasps out, “ _Yes_ , come on, Buck,” before Barnes can silence him with teeth sunk into Steve’s shoulder, before he can rein in this want that he’d never factored into his plan.

Hands then, big and brutal, at the backs of his arms to draw him in closer. Barnes’ jaw clenches hard enough that his teeth creak. He decides to forgive the infraction, and to ignore the ache starting up in his thigh from hoisting Steve up against the wall like this, only because Steve’s about a hair’s breadth away from losing it. He’s too gorgeous like this to inspire anything but a fierce sort of possession, with his head dropped to spill a mess of soot-stained golden hair over his brow.

A strangling little growl crescendos up from the center of Steve’s chest, where Barnes’ left forearm props him up, as he reaches to slide a hand over the outline of Steve’s cock. “Shit, look how easy you are,” he taunts, flashing Steve a smirk as he reaches lower to cup his balls. They’re tucked up awfully close against Steve’s body, same as his dick; he must have on fitted briefs, not boxers, Barnes figures, because he can’t get a good enough handful to twist. The heel of his palm rubs hard against the underside of Steve’s cock, and the stubble on Steve’s jaw scrubs against his cheek as Barnes leans in close. “Go on, muck up those tight little skivvies for me,” he coaxes.

Steve arches back and cracks his head against the wall even as he grits out “Hhh, _fuck_ you,” then dissolves into raucous incoherence.

Barnes will not lose track. Must not strangle Steve into silence. Steve doesn’t know shit about silence. He doesn’t, and that’s fine, however indecorous Barnes finds it (he will focus, he will refuse to find it electrifying). There is no one here but them, no one to catch them at this, no one to punish the forbidden sin of such sounds.

A burst of wet spreading heat registers against Barnes’ palm where it’s splayed above Steve’s fly. He sighs quietly. One step closer to malleability. He’ll make whatever concessions are necessary to keep Steve too distracted to go out and get himself immediately killed, which seems to be his foremost fucking impulse these days.

“Jesus, Bucky,” Steve pants, a little delirious, maybe a little offended. He crumples forward, leaning heavily into Barnes, who won’t give him the grace of ducking away to hide his face. Better to catch him by the chin and kiss him, soft and slow this time, no sharp edges to it at all.

Steve goes pliant for it.

Too fucking easy. It makes Barnes belligerent. “Can’t be comfortable, stewing in there with your own slick,” he breaks away to murmur once he’s turned the kiss into teeth and meanness. Steve huffs and shrugs but still, he lets Barnes suss out all the ways their lips fit together.

Barnes’ gloved hand slides up the side of his jaw to feel Steve’s cheek hot as flame under his fingertips. He wants to feel more of that delicious foreign warmth, wants (shouldn’t, but god, he does) all of Steve’s skin soft and searing, laid bare. He tugs the top of Steve’s uniform off and tosses it aside to run greedy hands over the skintight stretchy blue of the undershell. Only when Barnes goes for his belt does Steve stiffen, ducking out of another kiss.

“I ought to go get cleaned up,” he mutters, chewing at the sore spot on his bottom lip.

That tell, it’s tentativeness writ large, and Barnes--or anyone--could crack it wide open and use to carve out his insides. “Knock that shit off,” he says, popping Steve on the corner of the mouth. He’s too affronted to say anything at all in response, but that’s fine; he’s not gnawing his lip anymore.

“You’re filthy, why the fuck do you think I’m stripping you down?” Barnes continues, allowing his eyes to drift. Steve makes it easy; he doesn’t have to pretend to be distracted by the narrowness of Steve’s waist, the solidness of the muscles tensing as he tries to twist out of Barnes’ grip. “Can’t let that spunk sit overnight or it’ll never come out.”

A pained little grimace flickers over Steve’s face, but he keeps his hands plastered back against the wall, even though he could very well push Barnes aside and do as he damn well pleased. “Don’t worry about it,” he stammers, shifting and glancing at the door. “I’ll just, let me just…”

Barnes ignores him and opens Steve’s belt, no matter that Steve shivers and shuts his eyes and says, “Please, I’ve got it, don’t.”

“You ain’t got shit, sweetheart,” Barnes coos, because it’s true and it feels right as rain even though it’s only mimicry. He and Steve both know that Steve’s not going to do anything about the mess he’s made of himself except stand there stuck to the wall like a nervous moth.

Doing the dirty work Steve ~~wouldn’t~~ couldn’t? That always was Bucky’s job, after all.

“You've already done plenty of damage left to your own devices today, anyhow,” he says, eyes locked on Steve’s face, and then Steve’s pants are down around his thighs and his head’s turned as far to one side as can be without snapping his own neck, and Barnes’ thumbs stroke down and down over sticky smeared skin to snag against--

“ты че блядь,”  Barnes breathes, hands dropping to his sides. His throat’s too prickly-hot for Steve’s name. He says it anyway, _Steve_ , an incantation.  

Steve had left their makeshift HQ to strike out for the supposed conversation with Stark at 0300, without preamble, no time for pause and no room for letting down guard. Even if the meetup hadn’t gone to shit just like Barnes had told him it would, there never would’ve been a spare moment for Steve to get up to anything other than talking Stark down from his high horse.

So he sure as shit hadn’t worn these little pink panties for anyone else’s benefit.

Maybe, _maybe_ this is a thing Steve does often, maybe he pulls on flimsy bits of silk and satin all the time and just hadn’t ever worked up the guts to let Barnes see. It’s been boxers in plain colors, sometimes boxer briefs in greys or blues, each time Barnes has worked Steve over well enough to get into his pants. Never anything sweet like this, dusky petal-pink lace snugged down low around his hips and straining around his thighs, the sheer satin of the crotch stained dark over his cock, where it must’ve tented up and leaked before straining past the dainty waistline. He’s hard now, like he hadn’t just blown all over himself.

Suicide, for Steve to let his cards show like this. Barnes ought to throttle him; he shouldn’t be so damn easy to play.

Barnes stares as a rivulet of precome leaks down from the slit of Steve’s dick. He hadn’t realized that it was possible for human skin to turn as intensely red as Steve’s is now, not without blunt force trauma or the application of extreme heat or cold. He’s flushed fluorescent from his temples all the way down to his chest, one hand over his face and the other between his legs.

“Quit hiding,” he says. An awful tangled little noise issues from the back of Steve’s throat that ties Barnes’ guts up into knots. Untenable. He steps in close and skims a hand down Steve’s flank, quieting. “C’mon, let me see you.”

Steve cups both hands now over his cock, as if Barnes doesn’t know how raw and ready it is, as if this is any way to comply with a clearly stated command.

Barnes smacks the back of his hand, sharp and quick. “Hey!” Steve gripes, shooting him a furious scowl.

“You’re gonna learn, baby. No touching unless I say,” Barnes croons at him, and impossibly, Steve flushes even redder, though he resolutely refuses to look away. “You wear these just for me?” He lets his fingertips skim just under the lace waistband of the panties where they hug the swell of Steve’s ass.

It takes him too long to meets Barnes’ eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, Buck, I did,” he murmurs after a long, tentative pause.

“Liar,” Barnes snarls. He slaps Steve hard on his thigh. The sound of it is very loud in the stillness of the small room.

Steve gapes at him, silent, appalled. Barnes watches his pupils dilate and thinks _yes_ and _perfect_ as he feels a little scrim of hesitation fizzle away into nothing at the back of his mind.

“Like hell you did,” he says, working his hand further down inside the back of Steve’s panties, squeezing. “These are all for you, aren’t they. Make you feel pretty, hm? All secret and silky under your gear where no one can see?” He gets a finger notched into the band and snaps it over Steve’s ass. “Bet you doll yourself up like this all the damn time, don’t you.”

“God, _Bucky,_ no, I just---“

Barnes slaps him again, this time on the other leg. “Ah-ah, I’m not buying it.” He flicks his tongue over the split in Steve’s lip and twists his right hand down around the head of Steve’s cock, until his fist is inside the come-stained front of the panties and Barnes can feel the silky fabric stretched tight over his knuckles. “Bet you’ve wrecked a hundred pairs just like these. You can tell me. Go on, tell me how you get off just looking at yourself in the mirror, fancy as a dame. Or maybe it’s the feel you like best. You like touching yourself through your lacy little unmentionables, is that it?”

Steve is too busy choking on about fourteen different curses at once to do anything about it when Barnes drops to his knees and licks up a tongueful of the come still smeared over his stomach. It’s not the first time he’s lowered himself like this to prey on Steve’s needs and keep him docile, not the first time he’s nosed at the crook of Steve’s thigh, but it’s for sure the first time he’s tasted damp silk when he’s gone in to mouth along the outline of Steve’s cock. It does something wild to the base of Barnes’ spine, lights it up like gunpowder.

He sucks in a hard breath and blows it out slow through pursed lips, right over the head of Steve’s cock.

Steve doesn’t know about stoicism, either. He flinches without even trying to hide it.

“Still waiting for an answer, sweetheart,” Barnes says, lips skimming the fine trail of downy golden hair that leads up to Steve’s navel. Steve’s thighs quiver under his fingers as he traces them up solid muscle and inward, where the skin’s more sensitive, better for pinching when Steve can’t manage to work up the nerve to confess. His cock bobs when he jerks at the sudden flare of pain. “Not your first time getting all gussied up like a girl, is it?”

“No,” Steve snaps, defiant. “It’s not.”

“It’s not _what_ ,” Barnes prompts, planting the ghost of a kiss just below Steve’s navel as he runs his fingertips up under the lace edges of the panties, careful not to tear.

“It’s not. It’s not the first time,” Steve admits at last, hands flexing in and out of fists at his sides.

“And you like to…?” Barnes coaxes, tugging the panties just far enough to one side to free up Steve’s balls. They’re heavy and too much for the slight bit of fabric, but just right for taking into in his mouth to suck and roll over his tongue.

“To… _ah, god_...to, I like to feel them,” he gasps when Barnes swats impatiently at his ass, then grips hard and licks up the side of Steve’s cock. Steve’s fighting an awkward, squirming battle against arousal and losing badly, his cock staining the top edge of the panties dark with viscous wetness. “I like how they’re slippery and tight and…and wrong.”

Of course Barnes has deduced this already. Forcing Steve to admit it, though, breathlessly ashamed and resentful, while Barnes sucks at his frenum through spit-soaked silk, is…disruptive. Barnes nips him there, a cruel reproach, and Steve bucks against the wall, yelps “Shit, I’m gonna come, I’m--“

“No you’re not,” Barnes orders, jostling Steve to attention as he gets to his feet. “You’re gonna hold tight while I sort you out, and you’re not even gonna think about going off again, not ‘til I say so. Now let me see those pretty tits.”

A rush of air punches out of Steve at that. His face screws up as his hands drift hesitantly to the hem of his shirt. It’s already rucked up high on his waist from his squirming, but he doesn’t lift it quick enough to allay Barnes.

(Obedience must be immediate. Unfaltering.)

“Christ, you’re killing me,” he mutters, grabbing Steve’s chest right through the bright blue and kneading at the bulge of pectoral muscle. “Why you gotta be so shy.”

Steve’s nipples are already hard under the sleek fabric, irresistible little nubs Barnes just has to snag and roll and tug. Steve’s stance falters, and he inhales, in and in and in. He tries grinding against him, but Barnes just slams him back against the wall by the hips, and Steve lets him. Not one shred of resistance (delicious), not the faintest whiff of fear on him (idiotic) now, and that’s just about enough to knock Barnes right off his rocker.

“You stay where I put you,” he warns, dipping his head lower to suckle at Steve right through his skin-tight shirt. It fucks up Barnes’ equilibrium; hard to think, to maintain neutrality, when his veins zing with unaccountable need, when he’s got two big handfuls of Steve’s chest and can feel Steve’s heart hammering under his palm. He tugs the shirt the rest of the way up with his teeth, stretching it tight above the expanse of Steve’s chest to hike up under Steve’s arms, and slaps him lightly over the tightened little circles of his areolas. “That’s some kind of sin, covering up a fine rack like this,” he murmurs, sending humiliation scintillating through Steve’s frame.

Steve’s bared nipples are in his mouth then, his own low moan not even registering as he works the salty tight skin raw with his teeth. Barnes shoves his pecs together and licks at the fever-hot seam of skin between them.

“Shi- _i_ -t,” Steve grates, head tipped back, legs squeezing together.

Only sheer force of will allows Barnes to ignore the uncomfortable constriction of his own pants; it’s becoming impossible, given the unsettling, insistent way his dick throbs for attention. This is not mission-compliant; he’s here to manage Steve, to make him suggestible and easily swayed, not to pander to his own desires.

Disallowed.

Fingers tangle in his hair, catching, dragging him in, vicelike at the back of his skull.

_Correction imminent._

Barnes freezes.

He can’t afford to freeze. There is no room for loss of composure.

_Hold his head, get him in position._

Hands clamped over the sides of his face, maneuvering him, immobilizing him, and the asset--

*** *** *** *** ***

“It’s only fair, don’t you want me to...” Steve is murmuring--

Panic crackles through his lungs. His shoulders heave. Want him to _what_. 

Has Barnes missed something again, has he lost more time to some blank fugue--

Steve has stepped out of the pants crumpled down around his ankles and away from the wall, toward Barnes, who has lurched backward without deciding to, without remembering movement. He’s rooted to the floor now with boots that might as well be made of lead.

“I’ll do it however you say--”

Do what. No. He does not want to be done to, not ever again. 

“--Buck, I promise,” he says, too much sympathy in his voice for Barnes to bear. He must do something awful with his face then, must give away a struggle Steve hadn’t wanted to see, because Steve pauses with widened eyes.

“Turn the fuck around,” Barnes blurts out before Steve can raise his hands in supplication, or worse, apologize. “You feel like gettin’ saucy, why don’t you show me how perky that ass of yours looks in pink lace.”

Words like Bucky, but the tone’s gone off. No wry quirk. No lascivious humor.

Fuck.

Steve’s expression flickers, the facial equivalent of a stutter that leaves his eyes soft and unbearably searching, even as the muscle at the corner of his jaw tics. He turns as he’s told, because Barnes is the one telling him.

Barnes can’t quite wrap his head around the fact. The solace of it. The improbability. The relief like _home_.

A sharp crack. Skin striking skin, shorting out Barnes' thought process. Steve’s got his back arched, one forearm braced against the wall and his forehead butted up against it, and he’s just smacked himself. On the ass. There’s a handprint, ghostly white and prickling up pink at the edges. Barnes can see it plain as day, because Steve’s legs are set wide and the panties are pulled taut over his spread cheeks.

He does it again, taps himself hard enough to make flesh bounce, moans and runs a lust-clumsy finger up under the edge of lace. He pulls the elastic back and lets it snap, breath hissing through his clenched teeth. Barnes can see his cock, the way it sways and bobs. Steve tickles over his own flank and around to the front; he must take himself in hand then, given the way his whole body twinges and his calves flex. “Come back,” he gasps. “Supposed to be your hands, not mine, I know, but you left me hangin’, Buck. Come on.”

There’s a sheen of droplets on the floor between Steve’s legs now, little splatters of precome dribbling out of his needy dick. The sight of it makes Barnes’ whole groin feel shot through with static.

Steve, he decides, plays dirtier than Barnes had given him credit for. This feels...correct.

Gratitude swells in his chest, alien and unnerving.

“Goddamn, look how you’re drippin’ for me, sugar, “ he grits out, because pretense is everything, and it’s the only thing Barnes has got, and he must maintain it all costs, most especially with Steve. “Careful you don’t slip in all that slick.”

Steve sobs out Bucky’s name all in broken pieces, and that’s it, Barnes can’t fucking take it anymore, the gap of space between them. “Please, let me, I’m gonna come,”Steve gasps when Barnes pulls up tight behind him and fits his pelvic bones into his palms. Though still clothed, Barnes’ cock aligns with the crease of Steve’s ass to slip and slide over warm satin.

Steve’s arm starts to pump. Barnes can see it in the way his shoulder bunches up with the effort. A brief tussle is all it takes to get both of Steve’s wrists pinned against the rough-hewn log wall. Barnes’ reticulated metal grip is brutal, unforgiving; sensors register the creaking of metatarsals, the strain of tendons as Steve struggles reflexively and the arm recalibrates to counter what little leverage Steve’s able to gain.

“You don’t tell _me_ when you’re gonna come, soldier,” he corrects, despite the riot in his groin, then brings his right hand crashing down over Steve’s glutes. Steve’s whole body jerks violently. “I tell _you_ when you’re _allowed_ to come.” Another strike, harsh as splitting wood, echoes through the tense warm air. Pins and needles prickle over Barnes’ right hand, sharper where the gloves end to leave his fingers bare, and he knows exactly what it must feel like for Steve, too, assaulted skin gone tight and itchy with sore spreading heat.

Steve is motionless save for the labored heave of his breathing, but Barnes is close enough to feel the tension pouring off of him in lurid waves. Sweat trickles down the dip of his spine; Barnes follows it with his index finger, up and up until he’s stroking through the short damp hairs at the back of Steve’s neck. “Confirm.”

Steve nods. His fingertips are white where they’re dug into the wall under Barnes’ unrelenting grip.

“No point in playing shy anymore. Let me hear you.”

The silence thickens, and Barnes slides his hand down just enough to grip the back of Steve’s neck. He gives him a rough shake. Something almost like language tumbles out of Steve’s mouth.

Not good enough.

Barnes reaches under him to pinch his nipple, and Steve gasps and bucks his hips forward, making his cock sway heavily now that the panties are all shoved down around the very base of it.

“Understood.”

And then: “Again. Please.”

No artfulness to it; no hesitation. Just quiet core-deep need.

Agony, Barnes knows, can be transfigurative. Welcome, even. The bright white haze of it, boundless, swallowing up all sense of self and reason.

From Steve’s discarded pants, Barnes reaches down and pulls his belt. Brown leather, supple, still faintly warm. The clasp jangles as he lets the length of it unfurl. It sounds like gunfire when Barnes snaps it through the air, a warning shot.

Steve jumps clean out of his skin and turns to stare, riveted. Ravenous. His cock jerks hard enough to slap up against his stomach.

“Count off,” Barnes says flatly. Steve nods once, a sharp little jerk of his chin. “Get past fifteen, and we’ll see if I feel generous.”

Given the savagery of the thrashing Barnes inflicts upon him, it’s an impressive show of fortitude that Steve’s numbers only get mixed up twice, garbled inside of broken moans or stricken out of order by the sharpness of a particularly well-placed blow.

Silk shreds apart in diagonal swathes, a few tinged red at the edges. It drives Barnes half out of his goddamn mind.

By the time Steve chokes out _fifteen_ , Barnes’ chest feels razed and his right hand is numb around the belt’s metal clasp. He can barely stand to look at Steve’s cheeks, mottled  everywhere the pink satin doesn’t cover with thick welts welling up starkly white in some places and shading blackish-blue in others. The abuse extends down the backs of Steve’s thighs, too, where Barnes had been sure to land a few hits on especially sensitive skin. The threat of inundation, if he were to stare like he really wants to, is a shard of ice down his spine.

Steve’s whole pelvis is ticking with abortive little rolls and thrusts now, and he’s panting hard with his head hung low, really leaning on the wall for support. Barnes lets go his wrists and pushes his hands further apart, so that he’s braced under his own power there and both of Barnes’ hands are free to roam. Steve’s cock feels huge and heavy, impossibly full;  Barnes barely closes his grip around the girth of it, and even that’s enough to set Steve keening out a volley of pleas.

Barnes, it turns out, is a stingy bastard.

“No dice, doll,” he tells him, a vicious edge in his own voice now. “You don’t finish ‘till I’m all taken care of.”

Barnes tugs Steve’s panties down with his left hand to bunch around his quads. Metallic plates shift and pinch, grinding over abraded flesh as he does so. Steve yowls and tries to squeeze his legs together, but Barnes kicks them back apart at the ankles. He grips Steve’s cheeks and spreads them wide. Even the thought of licking his hole open makes Barnes’ knees threaten to give out, so he makes do with rubbing a thumb roughly over the puckered skin there, pressing at it, around it, just inside it, until Steve’s shoving back into his hand and making the most ungodly noises Barnes has ever heard.

It’s lucky they’re alone in the cabin, or else the whole team would’ve barreled down here to investigate. It sounds like Steve’s dying by inches. Barnes ought to shush him; each little mewl and whimper melts right down through Barnes’ viscera and straight to his balls.

Barnes tightens his right hand into a fist at the root of Steve’s cock and, without warning, strikes his ass with the left arm. Not full force, but it’s not far off, either. Steve rocks up onto the balls of his feet and looses a long gravelly sigh, nothing like the breathless urgent noises he’d made earlier. The sound of it is still dissipating when Barnes strikes him again, harder this time and further down, and again, right at the top of the curve.

Steve is quaking under the onslaught, held up more by Barnes’ arm than by his own hands. His cock leaks like a sieve in Barnes’ fist.

Another blow, ferocious, fit to bruise bone. Barnes feels it resonate all the way through his collarbones, down and down through vertebrae fused with lethal cybernetics. Steve’s shoulders and chest crash into the rough wood of the wall. A guttural groan shatters out of him involuntarily, so loud that Barnes startles, terrified that he’s truly injured him.

He hits him again.

Again. Ballistic strikes, back to back. Steve convulses, pouring sweat, utterly devoid of sound.

It’s only Barnes’ hands, come up to lock around his hips, that keep him from crumpling. Barnes spins him around and gets his arms under Steve’s, then lowers the both of them down carefully, setting Steve into a loose approximation of kneeling. He’s lax and faraway, not at all concerned with staying upright, and that’s just fine by Barnes. He’s got bigger problems right now than Steve’s delirious slouching.

He’s sweltering under his leathers. Every minute shift of the fabric over his crotch makes his insides twitch and shiver. There’s no sitting this out, no way he’s going to be able to pantomime tranquility, so he pushes Steve onto his back and climbs right on top of him, straddling his thighs.

He could stop. The objective is met. He could stand up and sway Steve’s point of view so easily, now that all his righteous anger is quieted. He’s impressionable, putty in Barnes’ hands.

“Please,” Steve slurs, so tremulous it barely comes out. “God, _please,_ Bucky, lemme, m’fuckin dying, Buck, _please_.” So tame in his sincerity, gaze gone gloss-dark with tears; his chewed-up lip trickles fresh blood down his chin.

Barnes misfires at the sight, picturing not this Steve, hot and massive, writhing under him, but rather --

Humid nights and rickety fire escapes, dank summer breeze through open windows, Steve angular and pale in Bucky’s arms, the plush red invitation of Steve’s lips. That same fervent, exhortative warmth suffusing his whole gaunt face. It’s not a memory, not quite, but it’s close enough, and Barnes feels the ache of it all the way down to the marrow of his bones.

Unacceptable.

He squares his shoulders and sets his jaw, refusing to lose himself to some artless shred of a past that can’t possibly serve him now, save as leverage he intends to use. “Shh, Stevie, I’ve got you,” he soothes. Barnes stares down at him and rips open his own fly with a furious tug, groaning as he jerks his cock free. Might as well be iron in the forge of his fist, impossible to handle without catching fire. Loosening his grip is torture, tightening it is worse, and neither does a thing to rectify this malfunction in his chest, a painful clenching sweetness he can’t abide.

He lets Steve skim sluggish hands, while he thrusts up into his own fist, almost, _almost_ all the way up his thighs.

Almost.

He wrenches Steve’s arms up over his head. The blue undershirt’s an offense, so he strips it off, because Steve must be exposed beneath him, vulnerable. Even the panties are only an obstruction now, decorative offal; Barnes snags the thin lace still looped over Steve’s hip and tears it loose, then rips the tattered sticky fabric out from under his ass to wad up in his fist.

“Guess you really liked getting your hide tanned, huh, sunshine?” he drawls, Brooklyn hard as armor now in his voice, tweaking Steve’s nipple sharply as he turns the gossamer pink stained through with sweat and come over and over in his palm. “Goddamn, you got these wetter’n any pussy I ever had. You’re a real good time.”

Bucky would’ve meant it. Barnes doesn’t, and yet he does, and it’s madness.

Steve chokes, mutters the names of a few saints under his breath, and then stalls out altogether as he watches Barnes bring the panties right up to his face. Barnes lets his eyes slip shut, like he’s letting himself drift on the heady musk. Steve quivers under him, a full-body shimmy that causes Barnes to grind down into the friction without meaning to.

Steve tries again, emboldened by Barnes’ permissiveness or maybe just hungry for the contact: he strokes tentative fingers over the thick leather straps of Barnes’ jacket, and because Barnes is weak and needy and cannot fucking maintain his resolve, he lets Steve get away with it, lets himself wonder, even though it’s always a grievous mistake, what it might be like if Steve were to skim lower, toward Barnes’ opened fly—

No.

Steve’s face whips to the side with the force of Barnes’ metallic slap.

Steve thrashes under Barnes’ weight, tries hooking under his thighs to throw him off. Barnes pins his hands under his knees and grabs him by the throat. “Enough,” he says, arm recalibrating with latent force. “You gonna be good for me, or do I need to beat the difference between _look_ and _touch_ into you?”

Never has Steve’s gaze been locked on him so intently as it is right now. It’s damn near feral, piercing and full of smoldering heat. Barnes’ skin tingles with it, little hairs at the nape of his neck prickling up under the scrutiny. It takes Steve a few tries , but he shakes his head emphatically. “Got it. I’ve got it, I’ll be good,” he manages.

“Yeah you will.” He grabs the panties off the floor where they’d dropped to shove over Steve’s face, slippery and rank, all bunched up over his nose and mouth. Steve arches up under him, frenzied; Barnes can feel the thick swell of his cock rutting up against his ass through his pants, desperate for friction. “Good and quiet, no more squalling like before. What if Wilson had to turn around, hm? He’ll think I’m killing you, you keep up all that racket.”

Steve flails under him furiously, like he’s trying to break his hands free or twist out from under the trap of Barnes’ knees planted at his sides. Absurd. They both know how easily Steve could throw him off if he really wanted to.

Barnes just starts to work his gloved fist over his own cock. It is merely tactical. That he hasn’t so much as unzipped his fly for Steve before today is irrelevant.  

Steve’s chest heaves up, pecs straining and newly flushed. Barnes shifts higher up on Steve’s torso, knees biting cruelly into the meat of Steve’s forearms now as he thrusts the head of his cock over the muscled furrow of his sternum, the short golden hairs there a breathtaking counterpoint to the smoothness of bare skin.

Steve is wailing, whining, every tendon in his throat standing out and all that sweet reckless noise muffled into nothing by Barnes’ hand and the fabric muzzled under it. “That’s right, you fucking love it, don’t you,” Barnes growls, predatory, as the movement of his fist becomes frenetic, as his voice starts to crack with cresting heat.  “Suffocated half to death with your own soaked silks, that’s what’s gonna make you spill for me, isn’t it. Unbelievable.”  

All at once, before he can brace for it, Barnes is coming in silent shattering waves, striping Steve’s chest and chin as he pitches forward with the force of it. His hand clutches Steve’s face, murderous, little bits of flower-petal pink peeking up through his white-knuckled fingers.  

*** *** *** *** ***

It feels like disintegrating.

Obliteration. Pure electricity.

_Then wipe him and start over._

The asset's eyes squeeze shut against a terrible shaking he has never learned to quell, then fly wide with the horror of unravelling--

*** *** *** *** ***

There's a body going limp beneath him. An objective left unfinished.

He lets go. Destroyed silk slips to the floor. There is lurching. The sucking in of an enormous breath.

"Now," Barnes commands. Reaches behind himself. Lands a single strike, open-handed, to the cock still digging into the back of his leg.

He dismounts to a ragged scream.

Steve is screaming.

Barnes kneels a foot away, motionless, as he seizes with release. Watches, blank and unflinching, as Steve falls apart.

It is unseemly.

(Not captivating. Not searing. Not beautiful.)

Merely necessary.

Barnes zips himself back into his tac pants and logs the rate of Steve's breathing, times the pulse thrumming visibly at the side of his throat before Steve curls onto his side, facing away.  

Quiet crying. It makes Barnes' skin crawl. Too much honesty, to show oneself like so. Too easily exploitable.

Barnes allows it anyway, for a little while. Steve doesn't know the rules.

Perhaps Steve will never have to learn.

"On your feet, soldier," he says. A demand, except somehow gentleness has crept into it without his consent. Barnes' stomach lurches, but the crying stops.

Steve rolls onto his back again, wincing as his whipped skin makes contact with the rough wood floor. He swipes exhaustedly at his tear-streaked face. Lies there. Still and quiet, staring up at nothing. Not rising.

Waiting, maybe, for his breath to stop hitching, or for his limbs to feel solid again, or for the smarting to die down across his ass and the backs of his legs.

Or maybe he’s simply forgotten the command, drifting in the curious buzzing lightness of _after_ , the vastness of the silence in his own head.

Barnes knows.

(He does not miss it, that impenetrable, all-encompassing calm.)

A stray glob of semen slips down the side of Steve’s throat. Barnes wipes it away with his thumb and brings it up to Steve’s lips. Such a soft, easy sigh when his lips part, such a sweet little hum when Barnes pushes inside and lets him lick it clean. He does a terrible job of it, sloppy and wet and uncoordinated.

Exactly how Barnes wants him.

Bending down, Barnes kisses him, because Bucky would’ve done it, because Bucky would’ve eased his tongue into Steve’s mouth and searched out the taste of himself there, of Steve, of the two of them combined.

Too much. Barnes has to tear himself away or else never stop.

Steve doesn’t try to pull him back in.

(It’s fine.)

The ruin of gentle pink that had been the panties doesn’t do much to clear away the spatters all over Steve’s chest and neck when Barnes wads them up and scrubs him down. Steve’s blue undershirt isn’t much better, too elastic to absorb very well. Barnes makes do, even wiping it over the floor where a few stray splotches have landed and started to dry.

“You’re disgusting,” Barnes comments dryly, filling up the long-stretched silence. He plasters on Bucky’s spare little grin, fitting himself back into that well-practiced tendency toward easy ribbing and carefully bridled affection.

Steve’s shoulders shake silently, eyes all vague and half-mast with a quavery lopsided curl unfurling over his lips. Barnes counts it as a laugh, as a win, and knows his work is done, at least for a few hours.

He rises, balling up the wrecked clothing and tucking it into the crook of his arm. “Come on,” he urges, prodding Steve in the ribs with the toe of his boot. Steve eyes him hazily for a long moment, as if he’s expecting Barnes to extend a hand to help him up.

Barnes simply arches a brow. Steve, vaguely chastised, takes the hint and gets up, slowly, wobbly and wincing. He manages to keep his feet despite the fine tremor that keeps up in all his limbs.

“Sure did a number on me,” Steve says. Wariness, down deep under the velvety looseness of his tone, an uncertainty he’s waiting for Barnes to put to rest.

“Yeah, and you loved it.”

Steve studies him for just long enough that Barnes has to work at holding his gaze. “Can’t argue with that,” he relents. His mouth opens again, but he falters, brow furrowing. Barnes watches a question go unasked, fading away into the daze Steve can’t seem to shake.

Success.

Barnes squeezes his shoulder, tipping their heads together conspiratorially. “You think you’re ready to give your team a rational debriefing, now? Not blow your lid and scare ’em worse than they probably already are?”

“Yeah, Buck.”

“And you can’t go in with some batshit plan they’ve got no real hope of pulling off without being excessively dead by the end of it.”

“Okay, Buck.”

“If you tell them they can just _walk it off_ , I swear to God--”

“I know. It’s alright. You don't have to--I’m alright, now. I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“I promise,” Steve says, raising his arm like he’s going to sling it around Barnes’ shoulder.

He doesn’t.

Barnes ratchets up Bucky’s smile one tick brighter as he looks Steve up and down.

“Disgusting, Cap. Really gross.”

“Right, right. Shower. I’m going. But why are you--what are you gonna do?” Steve asks, still a little muzzy. If there’s concern there in his voice, too, underneath the slightly drunken fog, Barnes refuses to acknowledge it.

“Well, first I’m gonna do a perimeter check, because while I’ve been in here putting you through your paces, Lord only knows what sort of undesirable element might’ve snuck up on us. If all’s clear, I’m going to take this proof of indecency out to the woods and burn it all to hell, because there’s no salvaging it with a little wash in the sink, and nobody ought to have to suffer you hanging it out to dry.”

“Fair enough,” Steve says, still glassy-eyed, but with a grin that’s satiation and mischief and self-deprecation all rolled into one. At least, that seems to be what he's aiming for, even if it falls flat. Barnes figures that’s just about as close to ideal as he’s liable to get, in terms of outcome measures.

Barnes hangs back to watch him gather up his pants and head for the bathroom. Slow going; every movement clearly costs him. The map of violence laid into his backside in deep purples and bright reds leaves Barnes dizzy all over again, abruptly breathless.

*** *** *** *** ***

Barnes waits until five minutes after the water’s started running to go outside.

He dry-heaves in the bushes until his eyes sting. Nothing to puke up but bile; he hasn’t eaten since yesterday.

When he’s done shivering and shutting down the vertiginous roar in his head, he conducts a perimeter check.

And another one.

Three, just for good measure.

(Steve is asleep on the ratty couch. Barnes peers inside long enough to note the even rise and fall of his back. He’s oblivious, curled in on himself and looking smaller than he really is, but safe, he's _safe_.)

The search proves blessedly fruitless. They’re isolated. They’re alone. No headlights on the drive, nobody for miles. Thank fucking Christ. He breathes.

In a makeshift dugout four hundred yards from the cabin, in a thick copse of trees as dawn breaks, he burns the blue shirt to ash.

He keeps the panties.

**Author's Note:**

> To my exchangee: here's to hoping this fic pushed at least a couple of your buttons! <3
> 
> Many thanks are due to Mr. X, who, after real-life shit hit the fan, bought me Taco Bell, handled Many Things, and played Internet warden so that I couldn't engage in panicrastination. 
> 
> All my gratitude to M., for being such a wonderful cheerleader, to A. for multiple copyedits and motivational squee, and especially to R., who beta-read the everloving SHIT out of this piece, helped me tear it down, and then held my hand while I built it back up into something better. Many tequilas and chocolates are due to each of you.


End file.
